r/rxrx

Executives told STAT firsthand experience with Claude Science will yield benefits

I don't think Recursion got much benefit from AI, at least the ML-oriented AI they started with. Their pipeline is unremarkable. Now that LLM-oriented AI could help accelerate drug development, they no longer have any first mover advantage.

Artificial intelligence today has about as much in common with the AI of 10 years ago as a smartphone has with a fax machine. When RXRX started, the idea was essentially: compare lots of cell images, sprinkle in some AI, and—voilà—100 new drugs would magically appear. LOL

It was an exciting vision, and to be fair, a genuinely bold one.

Fast-forward a decade, and the landscape couldn't be more different. AI has evolved dramatically. Machine learning, deep learning, foundation models, neural network specialists—entire professions barely existed when this journey began. 

The technology matured. Expectations matured. Reality also had its say.

I still believe the founders had a brilliant idea. In fact, I think the core vision remains as compelling as ever.

But after ten years of experiments, pivots, and billions spent with very little to show in terms of approved therapies, something else matured too: the founders' stock portfolios.

And life happens.

The once-hungry biotech revolutionaries become executives. One gets another tattoo. Another buys a boat. Someone cashes out and starts a new venture. Someone else spends more time with their kids. Nothing wrong with that—it's called life. But it's hard to keep selling the image of a scrappy startup when you've already graduated into the "successful insiders selling shares" club. RIGHT?

What surprises me most is that I wonder whether the current management truly realizes the position they're sitting in. Despite all the criticism, RXRX is arguably one of the largest AI-first biotech companies on the planet. Ironically, while most of the biggest AI companies are increasingly fencing off medicine, biology, and anatomy because of biosafety concerns, RXRX is already inside the castle. That's an advantage many would love to have.

Maybe the best outcome is that someone simply buys the whole company. Judging from the recent contracts, that scenario seems to have been contemplated already—and if it happens, I doubt either the old founders or the new executives will lose much sleep over it.

In the end, I don't really care who wins.

Long live RXRX—or whoever is first to identify humanity's biggest biological "bug," patch it, and finally prove that artificial intelligence can do more than inflate market caps and executive compensation. 

I'd much rather see it extend human lives than shareholder presentations.

My 2 cents.

Would love to hear how everyone is doing and what your game plan is.